


the road ahead

by katsidhe



Series: episode codas [5]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Cage Trauma, Coda, Depression, Episode: s13e14 Good Intentions, Food Issues, Gen, Hurt Sam Winchester, Implied/Referenced Torture, Season/Series 13
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-04
Updated: 2018-03-04
Packaged: 2019-03-26 17:43:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13862697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katsidhe/pseuds/katsidhe
Summary: Sam does better when there's a direction to go.13.14 coda.





	the road ahead

The night they drop Donatello at the hospital, Sam doesn’t sleep. 

Instead, he lies in bed and tries not to think of anything at all. He’s not very good at it. Usually his brand of avoidance involves thinking very hard about something different—generally whatever emergency of the week that needs cracking before someone ends up dead. That’s why Sam can stow his baggage. There’s always something else to do. 

When the problem is so intrinsically tied to his baggage, it’s more complicated. 

At least there’s a direction now, point A, point B. Sam does better when there’s a direction to go, when he’s not driving aimlessly until he hits a dog. Or maybe he doesn’t do better with a direction; that’s when he fucks demons and starts the apocalypse and unleashes the Darkness. 

Anyway. 

The direction is, get the spell working, rescue Mom and Jack from Michael, take down two archangels. 

In order to get the spell working, they need ingredients. They need archangel’s grace. They need Lucifer’s grace, which is a laughable fucking prospect. They can’t hurt him, they can’t trap him, they can’t mildly inconvenience him. Sam can’t even get near him without being so hyped on terror and adrenaline that he can’t talk, can barely think. Their last attempt ended with them on the floor getting their organs twisted, which Sam really should have seen coming. 

Turns out Sam’s pretty stupid, actually. For instance, Sam had thought, for a few hours of blissful relief, that the hearts of Gog and Magog would suffice as a substitute, just swap baking soda for baking powder, mix thoroughly. Dean could go kill some primordial mythic proto-gods, or whatever they were, and Sam wouldn’t have to spend another day with his face blank and his heart in his throat while he reads about trapping sigils that are definitely not archangel-proof. 

Instead, Donatello’s not dead, but he’s as good as, and Sam needs to get out of bed so he can go research a spell to rip out the power of the most powerful being on the planet. Because that’s definitely something that exists. 

“Sam?” 

Dean’s come to get him up. Is it that late already? He turns his head so he can see the stark red digits of his clock. They don’t say anything, fuzzy blobby lines. He blinks. They say 8:21 AM. Oh.  

Dean knocks on his door—three times, pause, two times, pause, three times again. It’s not a code or anything. They have coded knocks, of course, but Dean’s lost the habit in the bunker.  _Don’t pretend like the bunker is safer than anywhere else, Dean,_ he thinks, with an abrupt and uncharitable spike of frustration, and then the annoyance dries up and Sam’s left feeling guilty and queasy. He doesn’t _want_ Dean to be paranoid.  

“Sam! You up?”

Right. Sam’s still lying here, and he hasn’t said anything. He should say something. 

Dean needs to know that Sam’s not paranoid, either. 

An explosive sigh sounds from outside the room, and Dean’s footsteps recede. Sam lets out his breath. 

Lately Dean’s been walking on eggshells around him. It reminds Sam of back before Purgatory, when he was hallucinating, and Dean would watch him. He’d stare, a careful mix of worry and helpless anger and uncertainty, silent assessment, like Sam was a bomb waiting to go off, and if Dean just caught all the pieces, he could stitch them back together. Like a Sam-doll. Sam would tell him off if he thought it would change anything, but Dean knows him too well.  Dean’s seen too many variations of Sam with Lucifer, Lucifer with Sam, Lucifer as Sam. 

It’s good that Lucifer’s here and not there, Sam has to keep reminding his brain of that. He’s caught himself wishing Lucifer was anywhere but here. If Lucifer was back in Apocalypse Land that would mean he was with Mom and Jack, and that would be worse. That would be so much worse. This is better. 

Not to mention that without Lucifer, they’ve got no way to get an archangel’s grace, short of opening the Cage for Michael. And that is an abjectly terrible idea, since as far as Sam knows Michael has no higher designs beyond immediately razing the Earth with the might of an angelic army behind him. Lucifer, on the other hand, lacks the allegiance of Heaven, is still low on power, and is generally content to toy with his prey before jumping straight to genocide. 

Nukes are too impersonal: that’s why Sam still has hope. He should make inspirational posters.   

He’s pretty sure Michael hasn’t nuked Mom and Jack. Michael needs Jack, definitely, if he wants to try to break through to this universe. And Cas said Lucifer said Mom was alive. Nothing about what condition she’s in, but she can pull through. If they get to her in time, if Michael doesn’t get too frustrated with her. 

In the Cage, Michael generally kept to himself, by mutual agreement of two brothers who hated and loved each other and lacked the means to kill each other. The few times Michael showed up when Lucifer wasn’t around, he would simply squash Sam like a fly, too incensed and annoyed to expend more effort or creativity, and go back to praying or cursing the heavens or finger painting or whatever it was he did in his own dimensional corner. It didn’t happen often; Lucifer didn’t like it when Michael touched his things. Typical sibling stuff. 

Sometimes they argued. Sam would curl up in the darkness, half-listening to the angry Enochian, and he’d wait, and not think about anything. It was nice. It was kind of like what he’s doing now. He’d curl up just like this and wait for it. It’s even nicer now, it is, to lie like this, because he’s warm, and Dean and Cas are around, and there's less dread of what’s coming next. _Then_ was nice, comparatively speaking; this is much better. So, this is good. That’s objective.  

Hammering at the door, and Sam flinches. It’s Dean, again. “Sam. Food. Come get it.” 

Sam didn’t need food in the Cage but sometimes he would feel hungry. Not all the time, not always, but when it happened, Sam would remember he hadn’t tasted actual food in years and years and his empty stomach would wrench in pain. He’s not sure how that worked. Probably just psychosomatic. Or maybe Lucifer did it, no way to tell. Sometimes Lucifer made him eat—nope, no, stop.  

“Sam! Rise and shine and smell the bacon, dude.” Sam doesn’t say anything, but his stomach growls. Not necessarily at the thought of bacon— _greasy burnt flesh_ —but at the prospect of food in general. He hasn’t eaten in a bit. He’s hungry. 

It’s good, to be hungry. The normal amount of hungry, no pain, just the healthy regular-human sensation of _haven’t eaten all day, could go for a nice dinner_ , that kind of hungry. If Sam wants to stop feeling hungry, he can get up and eat something, and that problem will be solved. Just look at all these solutions, just look at all these ways Sam is fine, look at these things he can do that he couldn’t have done eight years ago. 

He can get up and take a shower, for example, get the oil out of his limp hair. Except his limbs are numb and made of lead and there’s something in his throat. There’s something compressed behind his eyes. There’s something black and icy clenched up in his stomach.  

“Sammy? It’s past noon.”

The doorknob rattles, and Sam freezes, rabbit-still. He can hear his heartbeat, too fast, he stares at the door. It’s going to open, and Sam will be caught lying here, paralyzed, just lying here, waiting for it. 

A noise of frustration outside his locked room. Locked room, his door is locked. “Sam? Look, I just—can you say something?" 

There’s a long, long beat of silence—no sound or movement, no breath beyond the door—maybe Dean's choking, maybe he’s soundlessly dying while Sam lies here—Dean’s choking, Donatello’s laughing, then screaming while an angel rips his mind apart, soul gone, brain going— 

“Dean?” His voice sounds weird and hoarse. 

A noisy exhalation. “Jesus, Sam, you had me—you wanna open the door?” 

Okay. He can do that. 

“Sometime today?”

Yeah. Right, yeah. Sam stands up and walks to the door. He unlocks it. He opens it. 

Dean’s staring at him. He puts up a hand like he thinks Sam’s gonna bite, or maybe fall over, then he puts down the hand and jerks his head in the direction of the kitchen. “Um. You want some eggs?”

Sam smiles at him. “Yeah, thanks,” he says. Dean’s food is good. Dean likes cooking. Cooking, cleaning, puttering—all the little domestic tasks they couldn’t have growing up. Sam can take it or leave it, honestly. The state of whatever place they’re staying in matters less to him than the wi-fi and the wards. 

When they get to the kitchen, the smell of old fried chicken is pervasive even though the greasy paper buckets are gone. Guess Dean took care of those. Dean plonks silverware and a steaming dish of scrambled eggs on the table—obviously fresh, even though Dean must have eaten hours ago. Sam sits obediently. Dean sits and starts forking out bacon from a pan. There’s a lot of bacon. But Dean’s got a plate, too, so he must be having seconds. A powerful rush of fondness squeezes Sam, and that’s enough for him to grab his own fork and take a bite of egg. Fuel for the road ahead. 

Neither of them is up for small talk, so for a few minutes there’s only the sound of cutlery scraping against ceramic. Sam concentrates on eating. One bite at a time. It’s not that bad. He just won't touch the bacon, and it’ll be fine. When he's feeling full and a little queasy, he pushes the plate away and goes to wash his hands. 

“Sam—you want something different?”

Sam glances back—oh. He’d eaten less than he thought. More than half the plate is left. “No,” he says. “Thanks. Want me to get the dishes?”

Dean’s face goes tight and he shakes his head. “No. No, I got it. I’ll put this in the fridge, yeah?”

“Yeah,” says Sam. “I’m gonna hit the library."

He can look for the other ingredients. Fruit from the tree of life, Seal of Solomon, blood of a most holy man. The information Cas tore out of Donatello.  _What exactly gives you the right? Nothing. I took it._ Sam remembers when Lucifer said the same thing, while he ripped apart a group of gods, in a four-star hotel in the middle of nowhere. A long time ago. 

It’s not even remotely comparable, though, because Cas isn’t doing any of this for himself. Sam trusts Cas. And if what he did was really necessary to bring down Lucifer—well, Sam's done worse for less. He's not gonna moralize. 

It’s game time. Sam can’t fall apart. No more lying in bed 'till noon. Like Cas said—this is war. This is what soldiers do. 


End file.
